It was a Friday evening, and I was, as usual, reading a book. Shabbat had come in with the sunset, but dinner wasn’t going to be for another hour. I could smell the food from the kitchen, and, in the living room with me, could hear my mother and brother turning the pages in their own books. The book I was reading was absolutely fascinating (and I gave it five stars on Goodreads, too), so I was a little irritated when my reading was interrupted by my father, who dumped eight books on the table next to me and asked if I want to have them.

Content Warning: The following essay deals in detail with cisnormative notions of gender and gender roles, and the sexism that goes along with it. It is heavily critical of this content, but if this subject upsets you, I suggest you read something else. There’s also lighthearted mention of drugs.

In Defense of Trashy Romance, by Gail

When I was younger, I had trouble reading English, despite being a fluent speaker. I was raised in a bilingual household; these things happen. At seventh grade, I was reading at tenth grade level Hebrew, but only about fifth grade level English. The year previously, as a Bat Mitzvah gift, I’d been given the entirety of the Lord of the Rings (a family tradition), and I struggled through every page. It’s not only that I wasn’t a great reader in English, but also that I was just that much better in Hebrew – it frustrated me that I was so slow that it took me about four times longer to get through a page in English than it did for me to get through a page in Hebrew.

Then the first day of Eighth grade came along.

I had already made a deal with my friend to sit next to him on the first day, but of course, fate intervened. Our teacher decided she was going to give us assigned seating, and I was sat next to the new girl.

Introducing Gail | new contributor to Northern PlunderHey guys before I hand over this post to Gail, and the blog every now and then, I thought it’d be great to give some background information.

Having other people guest post or contribute to this blog is something I’ve been looking into for a while, and after launching Blogs and Tea I got talking with Gail. They currently use Tumblr to blog, and so I proposed the idea of guest posting here to an existing audience for them to try out WordPress as a platform should they decide to make the move over here. So I expect a nice warm welcome to them!

I’m really excited for you to see what Gail has been writing for you as I think they provides a great contrast as they enjoy writing discussion pieces and read different genres than I do. We also have a shared interest in diversity, sci-fi, and fantasy.

Twitter

Goodreads

Time to Readis partnership of public library authorities in NW England collaborting on reader development activity

Advertisements

Disclaimers

Due to the FTC Guidelines for blogging, Northern Plunder would like to state that all books reviewed here will be honest views, we are in no way compensated for reviews of any kind from publishers or authors and we will state whether the book is from a third party this also does not reflect my review in any way.

Associates

Northern Plunder is part of the Amazon Associates, Wordery, and The Book Depository Affiliates programmes.

If a book is purchased from this blog through a link to Amazon UK or Wordery a small commission will be given to Northern Plunder at no extra cost to you.

This is highly appreciated and the money will be used to fund a giveaway and/or to support the book club.

Privacy Policy

This blog uses Jetpack.

On this blog (and not from any external data source) we may collect data as email addresses, wordpress usernames, names, and website urls for comments/follow purposes. Jetpack also tracks the number of views on pages, link clicks, posts, search engine terms, and countries for the purpose of personal blog stats with the help of your IP address. Cookies are also used for you on this site to remember you and your preferences. They are only set when a user interacts with Jetpack comments.

We will never sell your personal data nor use them in any other fashion other than personal statistic purposes.